🔗 Share this article

More than twenty Olympic medal winners, trainers and other international athletes have signed a appeal urging a stop to the death penalty of a boxing champion and instructor, who is on death row in Iran.

Growing Worldwide Condemnation

Amid rising global condemnation over the nation's expanding employment of capital punishment as a instrument of repression, the strongly worded appeal denounces the Iranian regime's verdict to maintain the capital punishment of Mohammad Javad Vafaei Sani.

The boxer, three decades old, from the city in north-east Iran, was taken into custody for participating in nationwide protests in two thousand nineteen and charged of backing an opposition group. He has spent half a decade in prison, where he has been mistreated and kept in seclusion.

“Athletics is meant to promote optimism, solidarity, and bravery,” the endorsers expressed. “The execution of a champion for his beliefs is a direct assault on these values and a warning to every athlete who attempts to express dissent.

Pattern of Executing Competitors

The statement pointed out that Vafaei Sani’s case was not unique and emphasized Iran’s past of sentencing to death competitors for their views, such as Habib Khabiri, skipper of the soccer squad, and a women's sports leader, skipper of the women's volleyball squad. In the year 2020, an athlete, a young Iranian competitor, was put to death.

Other supporters to the letter comprise a yachting pioneer, who captained the inaugural female-only team in a international sailing event and was the initial female to receive a esteemed sailing award; the former skipper of the soccer side Craig Foster; and a sports figure, who was in the Iranian squad for the international competition.

Detention and Unjust Proceedings

The athlete was detained in March 2020. The charges against him comprised “promoting decay on Earth through fire-setting and ruin of government belongings”. His verdict has been overturned twice but on 4 October it was upheld on the latest review. His legal proceedings was criticized as “deeply biased” by advocates and groups.

Appeal to International Body

The urging to prevent the boxer's death sentence is subsequent to a 2023 letter to the UN high commissioner for rights, signed by over a hundred human rights experts and groups, calling for measures to prevent the athlete’s capital punishment.

Capital Punishment Escalation

As per findings, there is an “execution crisis in Iran, which has reached shocking proportions”. In two thousand twenty-three, officials executed at least eight hundred fifty-three people – a forty-eight percent surge on 2022. Last year, data showed nearly a thousand executions, constituting the highest number since two thousand fifteen. More than eight hundred people have been sentenced so far in 2025.

Dissidents and protesters are victims, particularly in the aftermath of the the year 2022 demonstrations. Experts say the government have employed the executions to stifle protest, instil anxiety among the public and reinforce their grip on power.